HEARTBEAT

"If you love your new life so much, then why are you still here? Your ship left two hours ago." Azula asks the question Ty Lee does not want to answer. But she knows she has no other choice, no better choice, no choice other than the path of least resistance.

And she always knows well enough to follow the path of least resistance with Azula, because resistance has consequences.

"Because I love you just as much as I love Kyoshi Island, and the ocean there, and my friends there. I feel all this grief and it's the heaviest, worst thing in the whole entire world. I just want it to end. I feel like I can't leave until it ends."

"You love me? You love me again?" Azula slowly shakes her head, looking at the pitiful creature. But she is just as pitiful, because in Ty Lee's shore leave from the Kyoshi Warriors, in the time Ty Lee was supposed to spend visiting her family but spent visiting Zuko and Mai (and mainly Azula but she could not say that even to her own heart) Azula has begun to love her again. Just the first spark of it, but she can feel the love starting again in her after being severed for so long.

"I never stopped loving you," says Ty Lee. "When I was here and I'd see you in the halls, I thought my heartbeat got so fast because I was scared of you. But I know the truth and stuff now. My heartbeat gets so fast because I still love you, and I never stopped loving you."

Azula cannot be vulnerable. She cannot express that her heart flutters when they see each other too. She cannot do it.

So she just kisses Ty Lee, biting down on her lower lip before sinking into something softer.

The fire in the palace hearth sees their raw, passionate kiss grow until it touches the stars, their heartbeats united, and it sees grief be born and die like a broken sword against invincible love.